How the Kindle Fire’s ‘Mayday’ Feature Will Help Amazon Sell More Stuff

From Mayday to payday. Photo: David Ryder/WIRED

Amazon’s Mayday tech support for Kindle Fire HDX puts a tiny helper on your screen when you need it most. But the exchange between you and Amazon does more than help you figure out how to download the latest Justin Timberlake album. It could dictate the future of Fire OS.

Amazon released its Fire HDX line of tablets with a faster processor, better screen, and features aimed at helping you consume more content from the online retailer. But it also changed the way tech support is handled on a mobile device. Mayday places a tiny video of an Amazon employee on the tablet to help you solve whatever issue you may be having. The support personnel can even see and draw directly on your tablet if you let them.

While the practice of logging user issues and using the solutions to shape future OS development isn’t a new idea, it’s a concrete example of how the online retailer is playing more than just a specs game when it comes to hardware. By offering free, 24/7, 365-days-a-year tech support, Amazon is stepping up its game as a consumer- and retail-focused company.

For Amazon, selling hardware is a side business meant to push its other services. The company roughly breaks even on the sale of its Kindle Fire tablets. “We want to make money when people use our devices,” Bezos told WIRED, “not when people buy our devices.” And to keep people using those devices the company is making sure it’s ready for an onslaught of support calls.

Bezos says that thousands of tech support employees will be ready to take your video calls when the Fire HDX ships. All of those employees will not only be helping new tablet owners, they’ll also be logging every question, problem, and issue that gets thrown their way. All that data can be used to determine if something in the OS need to be moved or adjusted during the next update.

Using tech support calls to dictate future releases isn’t groundbreaking. If a company isn’t using that information from its customer service team to adjust its products, there’s a good chance that product won’t be around much longer. But Amazon’s gains are about more than just making sure you can find a setting. Amazon wants you to buy goods from the Fire OS. By fine-tuning the OS based on customer feedback, it can help you buy those goods faster and easier.

It’s OS design by committee — a committee whose feedback could lead to a better buying experience. If Amazon learns from your support calls that it if adjusts a feature it’ll sell more products, all those free tech support calls will be worth it.

Jeff Bezos told WIRED that because the company controls the whole “stack,” from hardware and software to cloud services, it can offer customers a helpful feature like Mayday. But that help goes both ways. With every call, you’re telling Amazon how to be better. And getting better at selling to you is exactly what Amazon wants.